In the Philippine setting, many community journalists have shown that the concept is worth trying out in real time despite inherent challenges. One of these is how to tell stories differently, how to focus on the different layers of public life, how people are beginning to explore areas of participation, how they engaged both the media and other community stakeholders to arrive at common solutions to common problems.

TWO CASES

The Visayas Examiner in Iloilo
The Visayas Examiner first heard of an ongoing community-based project in Banate Bay (Iloilo) that focuses on ways where people can help address environment problems. The paper felt this was the kind of story that should be printed in its pages over time as a running document of people helping themselves. TVE got in touch with the Kahublagan Panimalay, a local NGO working with the Banate Bay communities and discussed ways of partnering on a public journalism project.

The result was an agreement to work out an arrangement with two radio stations airing the Banate Bay project through their school-on-the-air program "Ugat ang Tubig" for TVE to devote sections of the paper for community discourse on the environment and its effects on the lives of citizens.

The Bandillo ng Palawan
To encourage more people to involve themselves in public life, the Bandillo ng Palawan initiated a Candidates' Forum during the last elections wherein local concerns were presented to the candidates by the different sectors.

The newspaper worked with the Jaycees, the Palawan Network of NGOs, a local cable station, several radio stations, and an internet service provider in holding the forum. This was later followed up by the Ulat ng Bayan/Ulat sa Bayan, a citizens' monitoring and local government reporting mechanism that Bandillor and its partners are planning to sustain as a public journalism project in Palawan.

Of course, the more difficult challenge is how to integrate this new thinking and perspective into the everyday grind of the news making process, into the writing and reporting of the news. It is too early to gauge public journalism's impact on the work of journalists and on the communities that they serve. The concept is still evolving, but it has also provided a roadmap for journalists who are serious about their craft and are looking beyond the writing of the story, the airing of a program…to how their stories can help transform communities into self-determining ones.

As in any other kind of journalism, public journalism demands that the practitioner hold on to the basics: fairness, balance, accuracy, timeliness, objectivity plus, stewardship and humanity. It also demands of him a commitment over the long term because public journalism involves a continuing engagement with the community. It is not easy and it is something that journalists must want to do.

Ultimately, public journalism will be judged not on how it will influence the Philippine media landscape but on how it will impact on communities and on people's lives.

RED BATARIO is a freelance journalist based in Manila. He is also Executive Director of the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD), a non-profit working with media, civil society and institutions for the development of an enabling environment that would contribute to better communities through public journalism.

This article was published in the July 14, 2002 issue of The Manila Times.